Dear friends and co-fighters,

Welcome to the next issue of Positive News. Let you spread it among your friends and co-fighters in your countries and around the Earth.

Please, send me addresses of your friends and colleagues  to be included into the list.

I will be glad to receive and publish your positive news from the fields and offices.

If you know of sites or mailing lists where I can find positive news for our digest, please send me their addresses.

Please, send me your suggestions on how to ameliorate the digest, to make it more close to your interests and wishes.

Sviatoslav Zabelin, SEU coordinator

Digest of Socio-Ecological Union International for July 27, 2021. №30

Maine enacted a groundbreaking law on Thursday, banning the use of so-called "forever chemicals" in all products by 2030, except in instances deemed "currently unavoidable." Maine is the first state in the U.S. and first government in the world to implement a ban on the toxic chemicals per- and polyfluoroalkyl, known as PFAS, which are notorious for not breaking down easily in the environment and can remain in a person's body for decades after exposure.

"I am proud to see Maine taking action that will change the conversation on how PFAS are regulated, not only addressing the entire class, but creating the requirement to avoid these persistent and toxic chemicals wherever possible," said Patrick MacRoy, the deputy director of Defend Our Health, a public health organization in Maine that coordinated with experts and community advocates to get the bill passed. Read more

Court Stops Police From Blockading Line 3 Protester Camp in 'Huge Legal Win' for Anti-Pipeline Activists.  In a development progressives called a "huge legal win in the fight against Line 3," a Minnesota court on Friday ordered police in Hubbard County to stop impeding access to the Giniw Collective's camp, where anti-pipeline activists have been organizing opposition to Enbridge's multibillion-dollar tar sands project.

On July 23, 2021, a Minnesota court ordered Hubbard County police officers to stop obstructing a driveway that leads to a Line 3 pipeline protest camp. (Photo: Giniw Collective)

The ruling comes less than a week after Tara Houska, an Indigenous rights attorney and founder of the Giniw Collective, and Winona LaDuke, an environmental justice advocate and co-founder of Honor the Earth, filed for a temporary restraining order against Hubbard County, Sheriff Cory Aukes, and the local land commissioner in northern Minnesota. "We want to thank the court for informing Hubbard County about the rights of property owners, and hope that the sheriff's continued preoccupation with the repression of water protectors can be focused on real criminals," LaDuke said Friday in a statement. Read more

In the Altai Republic, on the high-altitude Ukok plateau, 14 km of barbed wire stretched on the border of Russia and Mongolia will be removed in July and August, so that wild animals, including snow leopards and Altai mountain sheep, can freely migrate along familiar trails.

This will be done at the suggestion of the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF press service reported. The project to eliminate engineering and technical structures – barbed wire and poles-was supported by the World Around You Foundation of the Siberian Wellness Corporation. The dismantling of the barbed wire was organized in coordination with the Border Department of the FSB of Russia in the Altai Republic. The liquidation of the structures will be carried out by inspectors of the Directorate of Protected Areas of the Altai Republic together with volunteers-residents of the Kosh-Agachsky district of the Altai Republic. The project was supported by the World Around You Foundation of the Siberian Wellness Corporation. The Ukok plateau is a unique high-altitude ecosystem, a UNESCO Natural heritage site, a natural park "Ukok Rest Zone" has been created here, rare species of animals live. Read more

An Indian national park that was ravaged by poachers 20 years ago had some positive news this week: its tiger population has bounced back from zero to 48 in two decades. A wildlife census in Assam’s Manas National Park revealed that the big cats have trebled in number since 2010, following ongoing conservation interventions. “The findings have brought cheer to everyone in Manas, and show that the efforts at tiger conservation have borne fruit,” Amal Chandra Sarmah, field director at Manas Tiger Project, told the Hindustan Times. “We have already surpassed the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and Global Tiger Forum’s goal of doubling tiger numbers by 2022.” Read more

After 10 years of conservation work, new data from the Nepalese government suggests that the number of tigers in the country has almost doubled. Nepal has announced that there are now an estimated 235 wild tigers in the country, nearly doubling the 2009 figure of 121. In the latest survey, which was carried out between November 2017 and April 2018, camera traps and ‘occupancy surveys’ were used to estimate numbers.

The results make Nepal the first of the 13 tiger range countries to meet the Tx2 commitment to double tiger numbers by 2022. The target was agreed at an international summit in St Petersburg in 2010. Read more

More than 100 Far Eastern leopards listed in the Red Book of the Russian Federation were counted by specialists in Primorye, these data indicate a stable state of the population, the press service of the Land of the Leopard National Park reported on Tuesday.in addition to 110 adult animals, 16 kittens were recorded, but only leopards who have left their mother and started an independent life receive their own identification number and place in the database. The number of adults is considered an indicator of the state of the population.

The situation with the leopard population has improved significantly – at the beginning of the XXI century there were only about 35 individuals left. However, according to expert estimates, a population of 150 individuals is needed in the wild, which will allow the leopard to finally move away from the dangerous line. Read more

The Guardians’s work was enabled by a pioneering collaboration aimed at saving the reef and the economy it supports: this 100-mile stretch of the Mesoamerican Reef is the world’s first natural asset protected by an insurance policy. Successfully tested by Hurricane Delta, the policy provides a fast injection of cash for reef repairs after a storm. Time is of the essence—without quick restoration, coral colonies can die within a few weeks. Insuring the Mesoamerican Reef as if it were any other valuable asset represents an innovative approach to leveraging the economic value of nature to pay for its own conservation. The model is the product of a collaboration between the local government, hotel owners, an international NGO and an insurance behemoth—all of whom believe it can be exported to protect not only the world’s reefs, but also other ecosystems such as mangroves, wetlands and forests. Hurricane Delta was the model’s first test. Following the storm, the policy paid out $850,000 to the trust fund, and over the next three months, the brigades used the money to stabilise 2,152 uprooted coral colonies and re-attached 13,570 coral fragments.

“It was a very significant milestone in our work to explore the use of insurance as a mechanism to protect at-risk coastal ecosystems,” says Mark Way, director of Global Coastal Risk and Resilience for TNC. “The fact that the insurance policy paid out, and funded vital reef repair activities, is a win for nature and a win for the coastal community, and it will drive further interest in conservation finance and the need to protect marine ecosystems across the globe.” Read more

A new study lays to rest the tired argument that electric vehicles aren’t much cleaner than internal combustion vehicles. Over the life cycle of an EV — from digging up the materials needed to build it to eventually laying the car to rest — it will release fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a gas-powered car, the research found. That holds true globally, whether an EV plugs into a grid in Europe with a larger share of renewables, or a grid in India that still relies heavily on coal. “We have a lot of lobby work from parts of the automotive industry saying that electric vehicles are not that much better if you take into account the electricity production and the battery production. We wanted to look into this and see whether these arguments are true,” says Georg Bieker, a researcher at the nonprofit research group the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) that published the report. The ICCT’s analysis found that those arguments don’t hold true over time. Read more

Dear friends and co-fighters, Welcome to the next issue of Positive News. Let you spread it among your friends and co-fighters in your countries and around the Earth. Please, send me addresses of your friends and colleagues  to be included into the list. I will be glad to receive and publish your positive news from the fields and offices.